A uniquely gripping, hypnotically rendered account of young women making their way in Tokyo's underbelly and wounds of the past that won't heal. Kimiko Yoshikawa, a sixty-year-old woman, is on trial for holding a girl in captivity for many years. When Hana stumbles across a newspaper account of this shocking crime, her steady life begins to unravel. Along with two other women, she lodged with Kimiko as a student almost twenty years ago; a time in her life she has sought to forget. This encounter sends Hana spiraling into the past. As she dredges up memories of her fraught adolescence, the novel takes us back to the late 1990s � a time of economic upheaval that cast the have-nots, like Hana and Kimiko, into society�s dark underbelly. Struggling to survive in a merciless society that preys on the weak, Hana is forced to make choices that will scar her for life. What happened in that house to the sisters? And could the sins of the past now stalk them into the present?